What is formative assessment? Black and Wiliam (1998b) defined formative assessment as “all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged” (p. 10). Popham (2008) saw formative assessment as a process that had been purposefully planned for teachers or students to use evidences from assessments to adjust both learning and instruction. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), as informed by Formative Assessment for Students and Teachers (a division of CCSSO), defined formative assessment as a process used during instruction to adjust teaching and learning for the purpose of improving student achievement (McManus, 2008). Even though the research did not agree on the origins of formative assessment, all definitions concluded that the purpose was to adjust instruction and learning. For the purpose of this study, the researcher used the definition set forth by the CCSSO (McManus, 2008) which stated formative assessment is “a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students' achievement of intended instructional outcomes” (p. 3).
Bell and Cowie (2000) suggested that formative assessment can be used for summative purposes and summative assessment can be used for formative purposes. Chappuis and Chappuis (2007), supporting Sadler’s (1989) beliefs, stated,
Formative assessment, on the other hand, delivers information during the instructional process, before the summative assessment. Both the teacher and the student use formative assessment results to make decisions about what actions to take to promote further learning. It is an ongoing, dynamic process that involves far more than frequent testing, and measurement of student learning is just one of its components. (p. 15)
According to Dunn and Mulvenon (2009), “most literature categorizes any assessment used to assign grades as summative (p. 2).” However, “an assessment may be designed and packaged as a formative or summative assessment, it is the actual methodology, data analysis, and use of the results that determine whether an assessment is formatively or summatively evaluated” (Dunn & Mulvenon, 2009, p. 2). Wininger (2005) provided both qualitative and quantitative feedback on the data generated from an evaluation, thereby using a summative assessment in a formative manner. Stiggins (2002) provided the clearest distinction by defining summative assessments as assessments that were designed to evaluate a students’ learning after a set unit of instruction, otherwise known as assessment of learning. In a related report by Chappuis and Stiggins (2002), formative assessments were defined as those assessments that are designed to evaluate student learning during the instruction, or assessment for learning.
Types of formative assessment: Heritage (2007) delineated assessment according to “strategies for evidence gathering” (p. 141). The three types Heritage (2007) defined are: On-the-fly assessment. On-the-fly assessment occurs spontaneously during the course of a lesson. For example, a teacher listening to group discussions hears students expressing misconceptions about the science concept she has been teaching. She then changes the direction of her lesson to provide a quick ‘pop-up’ lesson. The pop-up lesson enables the teacher to clear up the misconceptions before proceeding with her planned instructional sequence. Planned-for interaction. In planned-for interaction, teachers decide beforehand how they will elicit students’ thinking during the course of instruction. For example, teachers plan the questions they will ask during the course of the lesson in order to enable students to explore ideas, and these questions can elicit valuable assessment information. Curriculum-embedded assessment. There are two kinds of curriculum-embedded assessments, those that teachers and curriculum developers embed in the ongoing curriculum to solicit feedback at key points in a learning sequence and those that are part of ongoing classroom activities. For example, student mathematical representations created during lessons can function as formative assessments, as can students’ science notebooks that are also part of students’ regular classroom activity. (p. 141)
Purposes of formative assessment: Heritage (2007) shared similar findings in her research by discussing the four core elements of formative assessment. The elements she identified were “1) identifying the ‘gap,’ 2) feedback, 3) student involvement, and 4) learning progressions” (Heritage, 2007, p. 141). Heritage defined the gap by citing Royce Sadler’s work in 1989, which stated that the purpose of formative assessment was to determine the breakdown between the student’s learning and an educational goal. Heritage clarified that after the gap was determined, then the teacher could help move the student toward closing that gap instructionally. She shared that feedback allowed teachers to gain insight into student understanding, helped determine the next educational steps, and gave students an indication of how to move forward by being specific and descriptive. Heritage (2007) explained, “the teacher takes steps to close the gap between the students’ current learning and the goal by modifying instruction, assessing again to give further information about learning, modifying instruction again, and so on” (p. 142). Student involvement is another key piece of formative assessment. Students need to learn to assess themselves and their peers in order to understand their own learning process. Not only did the teachers need to help students assess themselves, “students must also collaborate with their teachers to determine the criteria for success for each step along the learning progression” (Heritage, 2007, p. 142). Learning progressions are the last element described by Heritage (2007). According to Heritage (2007), “learning progressions provide the big picture of what is to be learned, and they help teachers locate students’ current learning status on the continuum along which the student is expected to progress” (p. 142). Again, feedback is an essential piece of this process. In fact, Heritage (2007) stated that “in formative assessment, learners must be able to use feedback to improve their learning” (p. 142). Without feedback, formative assessment becomes just assessment. Two of the main purposes of formative assessment are “to improve student learning by promoting self-knowledge and the ability to self-evaluate” and “to inform and improve the teacher’s instructional decision-making process” (Colantonio, 2005, p. 24). Colantonio (2005) elaborated: Teaching should empower students to gather, interpret, and analyze information, and to produce meaningful connections and solutions independent of teachers. Formative, ongoing assessment that provides students with descriptive feedback should be designed to improve students’ capacity to improve themselves long after they leave the classroom. (p. 24) Cauley and McMillan (2009) provided five key practices that supported formative assessment and that were directly related to student use. First, teachers should clarify learning targets for the students because this allows the students to set realistic, attainable learning goals. Next, teachers should offer feedback to the students that focus on developing their individual skills, understanding, and mastery because specific feedback provides hope and positive expectations for the students. Teachers should also attribute success and mastery to the direct effort students put forth so that students can see a direct relationship between effort and mastery. Teachers should promote student self-assessment. Cauley and McMillan (2009) stated that “self-assessment is a three-step process in which students judge their own work (self-monitor), identify discrepancies between current and desired performance (self-evaluation), and identify and implement further learning activities to enhance their understanding or skills” (pp. 4-5). The authors encouraged this so that students can develop autonomy in the learning process. Last, formative assessment helps students set attainable goals and develop self-efficacy (Cauley & McMillan, 2009, pp. 3-5). These five practices could lead to increased student motivation and achievement by helping students understand the learning process through use of formative assessment data. Chappuis and Chappuis (2007) recommended that teachers “give students a list of the learning targets they are responsible for mastering, written in kid friendly language” (p. 17) and “show students anonymous strong and weak examples of the kind of product or performance they are expected to create and have them use a scoring guide to determine which one is better and why” (p. 17) in order to help students understand where they were going. They also recommend that teachers Administer a nongraded quiz partway through the learning, to help both teacher and student understand who needs to work on what, highlight phrases on a scoring guide reflecting specific strengths and areas for improvement and staple it to student work, have students identify their own strengths and areas for improvement using a scoring guide, and have students keep a list of learning targets for the course and periodically check off the ones they have mastered (Chappuis & Chappuis, 2007, p. 17). This recommendation is to help students determine their current level of learning. Other suggestions for teachers to help them close the gap included “give students feedback and have them use it to set goals, have students graph or describe their progress on specific learning targets, and ask students to comment on their progress” (Chappuis & Chappuis, 2007, p. 17). A main point made by Chappuis and Chappuis (2007) is that feedback is the key to formative assessment. They explained: Effective descriptive feedback focuses on the intended learning, identifies specific strengths, points to areas needing improvement, suggests a route of action students can take to close the gap between where they are now and where they need to be, takes into account the amount of corrective feedback the learner can act on at one time, and models the kind of thinking students will engage in when they self-assess (Chappuis & Chappuis, 2007, pp. 17-18). Whether the data was utilized by the teacher or the student, feedback was the necessary piece to make formative assessment effective as recommended by the research.
References:
Bell, B., & Cowie, B. (2000). The characteristics of formative assessment in science education. Science Education, 85, 536–553. Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998b). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139. Cauley, K. M., & McMillan, J. H. (2009). Formative assessment techniques to support student motivation and achievement. Clearing House, 83(1), 1. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http:search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=45198851&site=ehost-live Chappuis, S., & Chappuis, J. (2007). The best value in formative assessment. Educational Leadership, 65(4), 14. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=27984941&site=ehost-live
Chappuis, S., & Stiggins, R. J. (2002). Classroom assessment for learning. Educational Leadership, 60(1), 40-43. Colantonio, J. N. (2005). Assessment for a learning society. Principal Leadership, 6(2), 22-26. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http:search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ766959&site=ehost-live; http://www.principals.org/KnowledgeCenter/Publications.aspx Dunn, K. E., & Mulvenon, S. W. (2009). Let's talk formative assessment ... and evaluation?Online Submission. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED505357&site=ehost-live Heritage, M. (2007). Formative assessment: What do teachers need to know and do? Phi Delta Kappan, 89(2), 140. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http:search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=26993445&site=ehost-live McManus, S. (2008). Attributes of effective formative assessment. Paper prepared for the Formative Assessment for Teachers and Students (FAST) State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS) of the Council of Chief State School Officers. Popham, W. J. (2008). Transformative assessment. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Stiggins, R. J. (2002). Assessment crisis: The absence of assessment for learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10), 758-765. Wininger, R. S. (2005). Using your tests to teach: Formative summative assessment. Teaching Psychology, 32//(2), 164-166.
Black and Wiliam (1998b) defined formative assessment as “all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged” (p. 10). Popham (2008) saw formative assessment as a process that had been purposefully planned for teachers or students to use evidences from assessments to adjust both learning and instruction. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), as informed by Formative Assessment for Students and Teachers (a division of CCSSO), defined formative assessment as a process used during instruction to adjust teaching and learning for the purpose of improving student achievement (McManus, 2008). Even though the research did not agree on the origins of formative assessment, all definitions concluded that the purpose was to adjust instruction and learning.
For the purpose of this study, the researcher used the definition set forth by the CCSSO (McManus, 2008) which stated formative assessment is “a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students' achievement of intended instructional outcomes” (p. 3).
Bell and Cowie (2000) suggested that formative assessment can be used for summative purposes and summative assessment can be used for formative purposes. Chappuis and Chappuis (2007), supporting Sadler’s (1989) beliefs, stated,
Formative assessment, on the other hand, delivers information during the instructional process, before the summative assessment. Both the teacher and the student use formative assessment results to make decisions about what actions to take to promote further learning. It is an ongoing, dynamic process that involves far more than frequent testing, and measurement of student learning is just one of its components. (p. 15)
According to Dunn and Mulvenon (2009), “most literature categorizes any assessment used to assign grades as summative (p. 2).” However, “an assessment may be designed and packaged as a formative or summative assessment, it is the actual methodology, data analysis, and use of the results that determine whether an assessment is formatively or summatively evaluated” (Dunn & Mulvenon, 2009, p. 2). Wininger (2005) provided both qualitative and quantitative feedback on the data generated from an evaluation, thereby using a summative assessment in a formative manner. Stiggins (2002) provided the clearest distinction by defining summative assessments as assessments that were designed to evaluate a students’ learning after a set unit of instruction, otherwise known as assessment of learning. In a related report by Chappuis and Stiggins (2002), formative assessments were defined as those assessments that are designed to evaluate student learning during the instruction, or assessment for learning.
Types of formative assessment:
Heritage (2007) delineated assessment according to “strategies for evidence gathering” (p. 141). The three types Heritage (2007) defined are:
On-the-fly assessment. On-the-fly assessment occurs spontaneously during the course of a lesson. For example, a teacher listening to group discussions hears students expressing misconceptions about the science concept she has been teaching. She then changes the direction of her lesson to provide a quick ‘pop-up’ lesson. The pop-up lesson enables the teacher to clear up the misconceptions before proceeding with her planned instructional sequence.
Planned-for interaction. In planned-for interaction, teachers decide beforehand how they will elicit students’ thinking during the course of instruction. For example, teachers plan the questions they will ask during the course of the lesson in order to enable students to explore ideas, and these questions can elicit valuable assessment information.
Curriculum-embedded assessment. There are two kinds of curriculum-embedded assessments, those that teachers and curriculum developers embed in the ongoing curriculum to solicit feedback at key points in a learning sequence and those that are part of ongoing classroom activities. For example, student mathematical representations created during lessons can function as formative assessments, as can students’ science notebooks that are also part of students’ regular classroom activity. (p. 141)
Purposes of formative assessment:
Heritage (2007) shared similar findings in her research by discussing the four core elements of formative assessment. The elements she identified were “1) identifying the ‘gap,’ 2) feedback, 3) student involvement, and 4) learning progressions” (Heritage, 2007, p. 141). Heritage defined the gap by citing Royce Sadler’s work in 1989, which stated that the purpose of formative assessment was to determine the breakdown between the student’s learning and an educational goal. Heritage clarified that after the gap was determined, then the teacher could help move the student toward closing that gap instructionally. She shared that feedback allowed teachers to gain insight into student understanding, helped determine the next educational steps, and gave students an indication of how to move forward by being specific and descriptive. Heritage (2007) explained, “the teacher takes steps to close the gap between the students’ current learning and the goal by modifying instruction, assessing again to give further information about learning, modifying instruction again, and so on” (p. 142). Student involvement is another key piece of formative assessment. Students need to learn to assess themselves and their peers in order to understand their own learning process. Not only did the teachers need to help students assess themselves, “students must also collaborate with their teachers to determine the criteria for success for each step along the learning progression” (Heritage, 2007, p. 142). Learning progressions are the last element described by Heritage (2007). According to Heritage (2007), “learning progressions provide the big picture of what is to be learned, and they help teachers locate students’ current learning status on the continuum along which the student is expected to progress” (p. 142). Again, feedback is an essential piece of this process. In fact, Heritage (2007) stated that “in formative assessment, learners must be able to use feedback to improve their learning” (p. 142). Without feedback, formative assessment becomes just assessment.
Two of the main purposes of formative assessment are “to improve student learning by promoting self-knowledge and the ability to self-evaluate” and “to inform and improve the teacher’s instructional decision-making process” (Colantonio, 2005, p. 24). Colantonio (2005) elaborated:
Teaching should empower students to gather, interpret, and analyze information, and to produce meaningful connections and solutions independent of teachers. Formative, ongoing assessment that provides students with descriptive feedback should be designed to improve students’ capacity to improve themselves long after they leave the classroom. (p. 24)
Cauley and McMillan (2009) provided five key practices that supported formative assessment and that were directly related to student use. First, teachers should clarify learning targets for the students because this allows the students to set realistic, attainable learning goals. Next, teachers should offer feedback to the students that focus on developing their individual skills, understanding, and mastery because specific feedback provides hope and positive expectations for the students. Teachers should also attribute success and mastery to the direct effort students put forth so that students can see a direct relationship between effort and mastery. Teachers should promote student self-assessment. Cauley and McMillan (2009) stated that “self-assessment is a three-step process in which students judge their own work (self-monitor), identify discrepancies between current and desired performance (self-evaluation), and identify and implement further learning activities to enhance their understanding or skills” (pp. 4-5). The authors encouraged this so that students can develop autonomy in the learning process. Last, formative assessment helps students set attainable goals and develop self-efficacy (Cauley & McMillan, 2009, pp. 3-5). These five practices could lead to increased student motivation and achievement by helping students understand the learning process through use of formative assessment data.
Chappuis and Chappuis (2007) recommended that teachers “give students a list of the learning targets they are responsible for mastering, written in kid friendly language” (p. 17) and “show students anonymous strong and weak examples of the kind of product or performance they are expected to create and have them use a scoring guide to determine which one is better and why” (p. 17) in order to help students understand where they were going. They also recommend that teachers
Administer a nongraded quiz partway through the learning, to help both teacher and student understand who needs to work on what, highlight phrases on a scoring guide reflecting specific strengths and areas for improvement and staple it to student work, have students identify their own strengths and areas for improvement using a scoring guide, and have students keep a list of learning targets for the course and periodically check off the ones they have mastered (Chappuis & Chappuis, 2007, p. 17).
This recommendation is to help students determine their current level of learning. Other suggestions for teachers to help them close the gap included “give students feedback and have them use it to set goals, have students graph or describe their progress on specific learning targets, and ask students to comment on their progress” (Chappuis & Chappuis, 2007, p. 17). A main point made by Chappuis and Chappuis (2007) is that feedback is the key to formative assessment. They explained:
Effective descriptive feedback focuses on the intended learning, identifies specific strengths, points to areas needing improvement, suggests a route of action students can take to close the gap between where they are now and where they need to be, takes into account the amount of corrective feedback the learner can act on at one time, and models the kind of thinking students will engage in when they self-assess (Chappuis & Chappuis, 2007, pp. 17-18).
Whether the data was utilized by the teacher or the student, feedback was the necessary piece to make formative assessment effective as recommended by the research.
References:
Bell, B., & Cowie, B. (2000). The characteristics of formative assessment in science education. Science Education, 85, 536–553.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998b). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139.
Cauley, K. M., & McMillan, J. H. (2009). Formative assessment techniques to support student motivation and achievement. Clearing House, 83(1), 1. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http:search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=45198851&site=ehost-live
Chappuis, S., & Chappuis, J. (2007). The best value in formative assessment. Educational Leadership, 65(4), 14. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=27984941&site=ehost-live
Chappuis, S., & Stiggins, R. J. (2002). Classroom assessment for learning. Educational Leadership, 60(1), 40-43.
Colantonio, J. N. (2005). Assessment for a learning society. Principal Leadership, 6(2), 22-26. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http:search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ766959&site=ehost-live; http://www.principals.org/KnowledgeCenter/Publications.aspx
Dunn, K. E., & Mulvenon, S. W. (2009). Let's talk formative assessment ... and evaluation?Online Submission. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED505357&site=ehost-live
Heritage, M. (2007). Formative assessment: What do teachers need to know and do? Phi Delta Kappan, 89(2), 140. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=http:search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=26993445&site=ehost-live
McManus, S. (2008). Attributes of effective formative assessment. Paper prepared for the Formative Assessment for Teachers and Students (FAST) State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS) of the Council of Chief State School Officers.
Popham, W. J. (2008). Transformative assessment. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Stiggins, R. J. (2002). Assessment crisis: The absence of assessment for learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10), 758-765.
Wininger, R. S. (2005). Using your tests to teach: Formative summative assessment. Teaching Psychology, 32//(2), 164-166.